How much should the government pay to compensate property owners whose land it has condemned? Legal scholars, jurists, and economists have been debating this issue for centuries. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Fifth Amendment’s value requirement of “just compensation” as requiring “fair market value” compensation – roughly the amount of money that the property […]
Author Archive | Ilya Somin
Assessing the Case Against Gay Marriage
Northwestern University Law Professor Andrew Koppelman recently posted an excellent article assessing recent arguments against gay marriage put forward by leading anti-gay marriage legal scholars and political philosophers. Here is the abstract: The case for same-sex marriage has been politically triumphant, and its victory looks inevitable. It nonetheless is curiously incomplete. It has succeeded, not […]
Penalties for Underperforming Politicians
By Ilya Somin on May 29, 2013 11:15 am in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Political Ignorance, Politics, Public Choice
Law professor Glenn Reynolds (AKA Instapundit) has an interesting column in USA Today advocating that we increase penalties for politicians who do a poor job in office: As scandals explode across Washington… one thing that I’ve noticed is that the people involved don’t seem to suffer much…. Government officials are happy making and executing plans […]
Interesting Missouri Supreme Court Decision Interpreting the State’s Post-Kelo Eminent Domain Reform Law
The Supreme Court of Missouri recently issued Missouri Ex. Rel. Jackson v. Dolan, an important decision interpreting the state’s post-Kelo eminent domain reform law, which bans the use of eminent domain to condemn property for “solely economic development purposes.” As Robert Thomas points out at the Inverse Condemnation Blog, the ruling gives the statute more […]
Obama’s Speech on Drones and the War on Terror
By Ilya Somin on May 23, 2013 9:00 pm in Drones (UAVs), Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
In his speech on drones and the War on Terror today President Obama made many valid points. But he also continued to elide some key issues. On the plus side, Obama correctly emphasized that the use of drones against terrorists is not inherently illegal nor immoral, that drones are often more discriminating and less likely […]
Huffington Post Live Discussion on the IRS and Political Profiling
Today between 4:30 and 5 PM, I will be participating in a Huffington Post Live discussion on the use of political profiling by the IRS. You can watch it live here. I will also be drawing connections between this issue and the question of racial profiling, a parallel I discussed in this post. UPDATE: You […]
Political Profiling and Racial Profiling
Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo has an interesting article arguing that conservatives are right to complain about the IRS’ use of political profiling, but argues that they should use the same reasoning to rethink their support for racial profiling in law enforcement. As he points out the IRS justification for political profiling is very similar to […]
Judging People by their Unpopular Views
Last week, economist Bryan Caplan wrote an interesting post explaining why people’s virtue or lack thereof is often most evident in their unpopular views: Consider a world where 80% of people are Conformists, 10% of people are Righteous, and 10% are Reprobates. The Conformists are epistemically and morally neutral, so they believe and support whatever […]
A Dog Bites Meat Story: Dogs Sniff Out Meat More Effectively than Drugs
This Vancouver Sun article reports that dogs are much more effective at sniffing out meat than drugs [HT: Steve Bainbridge]: Federal search dogs at international border entry points have a penchant for sniffing out one thing more than anything else: meat. In fact, dogs trained to find animal products turn up meat around 20 times […]
Obama Adviser Realizes that the Size of Government Matters After All
In his first Inaugural Address, President Obama famously said that we should not ask “whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” I criticized this indifference to the size of government in one of my very first posts of the Obama Presidency. More recently, however, longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod […]
A Star Trek Round-Up
Patrick Allen Foster of the Pub Editor blog has an interesting round-up of commentary generated by Matthew Yglesias’ recent Slate article on Star Trek, including my own post on the subject.
Review of Star Trek: Into Darkness
My wife and I recently watched Star Trek: Into Darkness, the second in the series of J.J. Abrams-directed”reboot” Star Trek movies that began in 2009. On the plus side, the film had some impressive action scenes and special effects. It also had more and somewhat better character development than its predecessor. Long-time fans of the […]
Upcoming Radio Appearance Discussing my Forthcoming Book Democracy and Political Ignorance
Next Monday at 7 AM eastern time (probably rebroadcasting at that time in other time zones), I will be on Stand Up! with Pete Dominick on Sirius XM Satellite Radio, discussing my forthcoming book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, which will be published by Stanford University Press in early fall (probably […]
Audio of My Discussion of the Supreme Court with Prof. Eric Segall on Stand Up! With Pete Dominick
Sirius Satellite Radio has posted the audio of my recentdiscussion of the Supreme Court with George State University Professor Eric Segall on Stand Up! With Pete Dominick. The audio is available here. Much of the discussion focuses on general issues of constitutional theory and the extent to which the Supreme Court is or is not […]
Joining Twitter
After years of resistance, I have finally joined Twitter. Perhaps, as the Borg would say, resistance is futile and assimilation into Twitter is inevitable. For readers who may be interested, my Twitter username is IlyaSomin. Despite this capitulation, I will not be completely assimilated into the Twitterverse. Given my rational ignorance about pop culture other […]